Tapered Roof Presentation

[Shane Clarke] Kia ora, tēnā koutou katoa everybody. Welcome to Nuralite's fourth educational webinar. Still as rusty as the first one, but they're all good fun. Thanks for joining us today. As some of you are probably aware, every time we do one of these webinars, we would normally do it in practise or something like that. We would take sausage rolls and whatnot along. And in lieu of doing that, since the invention of COVID-19, what we've done is taken your sausage roll money and we're adding that to different charities as we go along. So today, for every participant that is here, we're donating $10 to Auckland City Mission. Auckland City Mission just happens to also have a tapered warm roof on their new building that's under construction. The last couple of charities we've donated to Habitat for Humanity, Trees for Life and Kids Care. So between everybody attending these webinars, we've so far donated around $6,000 towards those. So I appreciate all your sausage roll sacrifices. You've made the world a better place for it. So thanks very much already for your contribution. Right, so my name is Shane Clarke, General Manager of Nuralite. Today we're going to talk to you about the tapered warm roof system. So what that essentially is, is we're taking an extension of our warm roof where we've got the insulation outside the structure, we're actually adding a floor in the insulation itself. We've got an interesting array of people on the panel today. I have Peter Mills with us from Nuralite, who's our technical advisor. Peter has the job of designing these tapered schemes and reports and condensation risk analysis in-house, which is to make everyone's life easier. Peter's going to talk to you about the software and what he does and how it works and some of the best ways to achieve efficiency with the taper board. I also have Rod Southwood from Nuralite. He's our National Client Manager. Rod's been with Nuralite for a very long time. He's also been associated with the construction industry for a very long time. Although he looks like it, he tells me he's not part of a boy band. We'll take his word on that. And then last but not least, we have Mr Andrew Bull, the Managing Director of Watertight Systems Ltd, based in central Otago. They are, I guess, affluent users of our products and have a lot of experience with our tapered warmroofs and membranes in general. I'll talk a little bit more about Andrew as we go on. So today we want to focus on why we think taper boards are a good idea, what they do, the solutions they provide. We also want to outline the limitations the product has. What I've learnt in my time in industry, there's no such thing as a silver bullet. I spoke to a colleague this morning, he said if we had a silver bullet, everybody would be using it. So we want to talk to you about the parameters that the product can be used in. And just before we start, I want to kick off with a poll to get you a little bit more interactive. I hope that as we go through, you put your questions into the Q&A session or the chat function. Towards the end there we will hopefully get a chance to talk about some of the questions that you've raised, if we don't cover it all off. And good news is if you missed any of this or you want to see one of the bloopers, we're recording this so we can email that to you at the end of it. So I'll give you a couple of seconds to get a crack at that poll. Excellent, thanks very much. Alright, without further ado, I'm going to introduce you to Rod Southwood, who's going to talk about some of the best instances where to use tapered boards, what to avoid and some of the ways we can save on time, economy and money. Over to you Rod. Thank you Shane and welcome everybody. [Rod Southwood] Yes, tapered insulation PIR boards. If we touch on new builds to start with, a concrete substrate. If you're building with a concrete substrate, the tapered Enertherm PIR board is an excellent way to achieve falls. It also provides a nice average R value. It's lightweight and it's extremely strong. The advantages of the PIR tapered over screeds. The screeds that you generally use are heavy, so weight is a factor. There's also the cost of supplying and applying the screed. And also at the end of it, there's also the curing of the screed. So when it comes to a new concrete structure, whether it's decks, roofs, gutters, skirt roofs, balconies, the tapered insulation is certainly the way to go over a traditional screed. For solid timber substrates, for example, CLT panel, which we're doing a number of, one being in the CBD at the moment. The tapered PIR is also an excellent material to use to create the falls on CLT panel and obviously provides those R ratings and the quick instal and the lightweight as I said before. When it comes to plywood roofs for new build, it is achievable. However, majority of time in the projects we've been involved in, it is simpler to pitch the ply. At the end of the day, the amount of work involved in constructing that plywood diaphragm is not so much different to putting a pitch in there. There's obviously a slight variance in the angle, but there's not a lot to construct that. So it's proven that that pitching ply is certainly the way to go. Not to say that, as I said, that it can't be used in certain instances and it would pay to contact an Nuralite technical advisor to discuss that process with you. And the same applies to metal tray. If you're going to build with new metal tray, it is cost effective to put the fall in the metal tray. And when you use those two systems with the fall, obviously we also have the flat PIR boards to create a warm roof. So you're going to get the added benefits of that system. And at the end of the day, it obviously all comes down to time and money, which is what we're all after. When it comes to remedial aspects, revamping your roof. Plywood is an excellent substrate for tapered PIR. As I said, increasing the fall, giving you a warm roof, which provides extra R value. It's lightweight, yet again, great for the existing structure. And in most cases, the existing membrane can be used as the vapour barrier. Obviously that needs to be gone through with the applicator and check that it's airtight. Regardless of the membrane type, it can be used as a vapour barrier. Concrete, existing concrete structures are also excellent for tapered PIR to increase falls. The same with existing metal roofs. The tapered board can be utilised on existing metal, depending on the profile, complexity, and a lot of design, a lot of parameters around what you're actually dealing with. But Nuralite, not only do we have specifications in our remedial section of the website, we also will go to the site with you and do a bespoke specification based on the situation that you have. When it does come to that remedial market, there's not a lot that we can't go over and increase that fall for you and provide the other benefits that I've spoken about. So you're going to get a lot of benefits out of it with a lightweight system. So to rejuvenate your roof is certainly the way to go when we're looking for increased falls. [Shane Clarke] OK, nice. Yeah, mate. Thanks for that overview, Rod. I've had a quick question come in here from Kate. She's talking about, you were mentioning the overlay with the tapered system. How much of an increase in your fall would a tapered board give you? [Rod Southwood] So our tapered boards that come from Belgium from our supplier are set at a 1 in 60, which is a 1 degree fall. So on top of your existing structure, we're adding another 1 degree. [Shane Clarke] Excellent. These questions are coming in thick and fast. It's great to see. Thank you for your participation. Someone's asked, by overlaying an existing substrate, obviously remedial is a hot topic at the moment. Is the PIR board going to prevent thermal movement into the structure? [Rod Southwood] Yes, the PIR board will. Because the PIR board is the absolution, your average R value built up over the common tapered roof will provide you with what's known as a warm roof, which we sometimes relate to as de-absolution. And basically that will eliminate condensation within your roof space. [Shane Clarke] OK, excellent. I've got another question here from Richard on the back of Kate's first question about the 1 degree. Does 1 degree meet the building code or the council requirements? [Rod Southwood] It certainly does with Nuralite's code mark. So we're code mark accredited. And the 1 degree fall is more than suitable for our membrane systems. We actually have a default factor of 0.73 degrees, which is 1 in 80. So by turning up to even a flat roof, we can provide everything you need to get through council based on our code mark criteria with our membrane systems. [Shane Clarke] OK, cool. Rod, just on the next slide there, we've got the tapered roof renders to show people how it's built up. We've got a big room full of all sorts of people from throughout the industry. We've got designers, applicators, engineers. Looks like we've got some property managers slash owners in here as well. So a bit of a mixed group, which is great to see. So just want to run through the tapered board render you've got there, Rod, from the bottom up. [Rod Southwood] Yeah, sure. So obviously in this one we have a substrate, which, like I said before, could be any type of substrate. On top of that substrate, we have a vapour diffusion layer, which is a 0.6mm aluminium foil membrane. That is a self-adhesive membrane suitable for all substrates. We then have the buildup of the tapered PIR boards there. Obviously going to end up giving you a great average R value, which will act as a warm roof, thus eliminating condensation within your roof space. And that is an aluminium double-sided, a double-sided aluminium coated PIR board. And on top of that, you will see a base sheet that is a vented base sheet. So that's a 3mm bitumen self-adhesive ventilated base sheet. In other words, that has approximately 40% adhesion to the PIR board. And that will give any slight amount of moisture vapour, the ability to track through the unadhered areas. And then on top of that, we have a mineral cap sheet, which is available in a selection of colours. [Shane Clarke] Excellent. Sounds like there's lots of room for redundancy in that buildup. Yes, there is. Excellent. Well, I'm just going to park the questions here. They're still coming in thick and fast. I hope towards the end there we will get a chance to answer them all. Now, if we don't get a chance to get through them all, what we will do is answer them in full and they'll come through the email towards the end of this. I'm just going to throw now to Peter Mills, who is our internal technical rep. He's going to show us the software he's using and what he's actually doing for a job. Pete, can you tell us? [Peter Mills] I do quite a fair bit of stuff. A lot of my job nowadays revolves around organising these tapered plans and the moisture calculations that go with them. I've been here about two and a half years and this has become a major part of my role over the last year and a half. Shall I go into the most recent plan that we want to talk about, Shane? [Shane Clarke] Yeah, if you want to run through that one, this is a bit of a show and tell to start off with. [Peter Mills] Okay, so we've been working with a large architectural practise in Auckland about a commercial kind of hotel building that they're designing. They came to us and said we want to form the falls with your PIR installation and we want to make it as efficient as we possibly can. With that, they gave us the artistic licence, if you will, to add and move outlets within a degree. We looked at the plan and what I'll do is I'll open up the software I'm using and I'll show you the plan that we ended up using. They started off with 10 outlets here and the distance between them was quite large and that's quite important for tapered boards and I'll show you why. So what I'll do is I'll erase two of these outlets to the left. What ends up happening is because there's such a distance between the low point and the high point, the volume of the insulation builds up to quite a high level. For that reason, we added another two outlets, spaced them apart and were able to basically reduce the total volume of insulation we were using and because of that we were able to save cost. [Shane Clarke] Yeah, cool. So you're not only saving money on the volume of PIR board, you're also, I mean, that has a knock-on effect with things like freight and things like that. Is that right? [Peter Mills] That's correct, Shane. So Enertherm PIR is quite a volume heavy product. A lot of the cost in freight just comes out of how much space it takes up rather than how heavy it is. So for this job in particular, I've brought up a report just now and I will use a pointer. [Shane Clarke] Sorry Pete, just what does the ABCD mean on your plan there? Oh, that's a good point. [Peter Mills] So we've got four different sizes of the tapered board and so what happens is we start with an A board which goes from 40 to 60 millimetres in thickness. So at the very least we've got 40 mils. Then from there we go to a B board which is 60 to 80. The C board is 80 to 100 and then the D board is 100 to 120. When we go past that we add a flat 80 millimetre board and we start again with an A board. So they basically indicate the thicknesses that we're using on the plan and you can see all over this plan behind my report screen it's got A through D scribbled all over it. So what we were able to do as a result of this is we were able to get this report printout that I'm currently showing on screen. It's got a lot of very useful information, the most important of which are the quantities, which I'm kind of hovering my mouse around, and the R value, the average R value for the roof, which is what I'm currently hovering under. So with this arrangement we were able to go back to the designers and say hey this is an arrangement that we think is going to use the lease boards while still forming the roof. We printed out the plan with the report, sent it to them and got them to overlay it with their roof plan and they agreed to that and basically this has been set in stone for when the project goes to tender. [Shane Clarke] Excellent, that looks like a nice and straightforward roof, we love to get those. Do you have the ability to do anything a little bit more complex? [Peter Mills] Yep, so I've had a lot of practise with this and I'm able to manipulate it so that we can do some more complex plans. What I'll show you is a project we did down in Queenstown. It's got quite complex roof geometry. Everything on this roof falls to outside gutters but due to the shape of it I had to manipulate the programme so that we would get everything uniformly lining up. So we can just about do any roof shape, it's just a matter of time working with the architect and checking that it all works with the conditions that they want. [Shane Clarke] So in order to do one of these taper schemes economically and efficiently and things like that, what sort of things do you need from the designer? [Peter Mills] What we really need is a copy of their plan with the area that they want highlighted. So with this example plan there's a outline around it and we also need it to be dimensioned up because I have to redraw this roof area in its entirety. It also has to have the outlets and their locations. [Shane Clarke] Good stuff. So just to remind us all again, what were some of the outputs that the report gives us? [Peter Mills] So the programme gives us a nice looking plan like this where it shows the overview and the quantities. It also gives us a cut list to give back to the architect and to the contractors. So this is a nice report that it generates about the quantities needed, the average R value and what the thicknesses are going to be from minimum to maximum and the average. [Shane Clarke] Cool, so we're going obviously from a thin edge to a thick edge. We want to make sure we've got efficient insulation over the structure. Are there any other things that you do make to double check that we're getting the right thing in the right place? [Peter Mills] Yep, so I'm responsible for what's called a condensation risk analysis and what we're able to do is we're able to put in the components that make up the roof structure and we're able to put in the conditions that it's going to be under and we can generate this report that shows the R value, the amount of condensation and also the heat protection. But the most important aspect of it is that condensation analysis. So for that job we're working on in the city, we were able to analyse that there's not going to be a risk of condensation in that structure because of the thicknesses that they're using. [Shane Clarke] Excellent mate, thanks for that. We've had a few questions come in. I am noting the time, so what we will do is we'll probably put those towards the end there Pete. So stay awake, hang in there mate. So I'm going to introduce you to Mr Andrew Bull who is the Managing Director of Watertight Systems Limited. Andrew Bull was previously a builder and has been doing this gig for 14 years now. A couple of interesting facts about Andrew. He is a father of three and an average snowboarder. Sorry, very good snowboarder, that's right. All right, over to you Andrew. It's all yours mate. [Andrew Bull] Thanks Shane, I don't know who you're talking to about my snowboarding but I'm average, thank you. I will be at Cadrona tomorrow with two of my children for the opening day. So I mean to talk about this job here, this is a job designed by Patterson Architects. We were invited to tender for the job by one of our clients in Wanaka which was Tony Quirk Builders. So once we received the tender drawings we fired them up to Peter who mapped us out the job and sent us back a markup which was, from our point of view, really helpful for being accurate with our tender. It also gave us a cubic meterage so we could calculate the freight and then when we presented it to our client it was very professional and we also gave them the condensation breakdown from Peter as well which is very good. We've managed to win the job and we're about 95% through it at the moment. So when it comes to application the map that we got from Nuralite was great for our guys on site. We had them on a job folder so they can pull them up on their iPads on site and they can work, they can put the puzzle together efficiently and in a good way and I can confirm that this went together exactly as per Pete's map so that was very good. [Shane Clarke] Is there a strategy when you start to lay the board? You don't have to tell me all your secret sauce but is there a fundamental way to start the project and finish and start and stop? [Andrew Bull] Yeah I mean when we're applying it, especially out in the open like this job, it was not under cover so we need to work, obviously we start at the low point and work up to a high point so we don't bite off more than we can chew each phase and so we'll work from the sump to a ridge and then we'll cover it like in the photo on your right there ASAP to get the PIR watertight before there's you know any inclement weather comes in. But it really, I mean you know it is a great system, it's easy to work with, you know it cuts well, it looks great and you know I find with one degree the water moves pretty pretty easily through it. We don't find any pooling on any of that with the membrane system on them with the one degree so that's how it goes together. [Shane Clarke] Oh excellent, sounds like a great team effort. I think we've got another slide further on of sort of shows a bit of a build-up of the details of a cross-section of what you've actually achieved in the previous slide. [Andrew Bull] Yeah you can see the parapet there, obviously the roof side you can see there's going to be a ballast on this roof and we're having to you know wrap the parapet in a 30mm PIR insulation and you know the architect, the designer wanted to bring the insulation out 900mm from the buildings to make sure there's no low or less thermal bridging and you'll see in another image that it actually come up quite good. Looks pretty sharp. All the areas that are exposed to the UV we use the mineral chip membrane which obviously looks very good and also protects the membrane from the UV. [Shane Clarke] I think we've got a 99% finish, well finish of the roof anyway not the building. [Andrew Bull] Yeah that's right, I mean the roof is almost finished where you know there's a couple of details awaiting as far as a stone veneer coming up that we need to flash and dress but that's pretty much a finished roof. The area, the reason again you can see the different types of membrane is the area inside the parapet so the ballasted area is using your 3PG which is the specifically designed membrane for your grass roofs or ballasted areas and eventually that will have a polythene slip layer, the plaza deck as a drainage layer and then there'll be 30-40mm ballast on top of that. [Shane Clarke] Excellent, thanks for that overview, it's good to get it from the other end of the construction spectrum I guess, we all see it at our end, drawn on plans and stuff and great to see it in its finished situation. Right by my clock we've got about four minutes to go, I've got a couple of questions here, I might just throw these out to anyone in the panel actually and if you guys can race each other for it. So now I've got here, a question here is how heavy is the product? Does anyone have an answer for that? We're talking about it's lighter than screeds and it's a replacement for screeds and it's faster, how much lighter is it than a screed? [Rod Southwood] Yeah I can answer that Shane, the product is 33kgs per cubic metre, so that's 33 kilos which is a lot less than obviously screeds vary in weight depending on what screed you're using but they would be starting at a tonne plus even for a lightweight screed per cube, so yeah 33kgs is extremely light for a cubic metre. [Shane Clarke] Another one here, have we got an example of the R-Value, we talk about average R-Value of the roof, what sort of thickness are we getting per R-Value? [Peter Mills] So are we talking about the average or with a flat board? [Shane Clarke] Oh just an example of an R-Value for a certain thickness just. [Peter Mills] Okay so I mean our 70mm board has an R-Value of 3.15 but for example with that job that we're doing in Auckland that I showed earlier the average R-Value for that was 4.74, so it ends up being quite high. Wow just get high. [Shane Clarke] This is probably for you Andrew, as someone who actually you know doesn't have paper cups on their hands they're actually out there doing it, what sort of tools are you using to install this board? [Andrew Bull] We cut the insulation boards with either a skill saw, handsaw or a blade, you know the thinner stuff the 30mm PIR over the parapets cuts easily with a blade and the slightly thicker ones we need to run the skill saw through it. [Shane Clarke] Nice and easy. [Andrew Bull] Very easy. [Shane Clarke] Excellent. I've got a question here, I think I know who this is from, is the warm roof tapered system compatible with electronic leak protection? [Andrew Bull] Yes Thomas it is and I think that's a good question because I'm glad you brought that up, I mean recently IRD have done some testing on the on the Nuratherm system because of the foil, and for us applicators now we need to tape all the joins of the PIR with a foil tape and then they can conduct an earth off that and test for leaks in the future which is bloody helpful for the ballast and grass roof, so yeah it's very helpful for that. [Shane Clarke] Excellent, I think we've got time for a couple more, Pete this is probably for you mate, what's your turnaround time roughly for some of these tapered schemes mate? [Peter Mills] To be honest it really depends on the size of the roof, I can do smaller ones on the day, that Sylvia Park one took us a couple of working days to go through that one in the city. [Shane Clarke] Nice, OK cool, right just while I look for another question I'm just going to put out our second poll if you wouldn't mind entering your thoughts please, we'd like to know what you thought of our presentation, did you get anything out of it or should we just stick to our day job, we're keen to get your feedback on that. So I'd like to thank all the panellists today for their time and contribution, I hope that's answered some of your questions, like I said we didn't get the chance to get through them all but they'll all be in the text that we send out to all the attendees with this amazing video we've just created. So up and coming we've got more webinars in the next two weeks and the next one is on saving carbon and upgrading existing roofs, it's something we're quite passionate about, it's all very well building new buildings, we think some of the buildings can actually be improved upon saving our carbon footprint. Two weeks after that we are going to talk about a special new product we're looking to launch and then the webinar after that is we're going to talk about using roofs as living spaces, so we've talked about the membranes in the roofs and what we've created, we're going to talk about what we can actually create on top of the roof and actually make some use of that wonderful flat space you've just specified. I'm just going to finish up again with the third poll, lucky last, just if you need any more further information from that. So yeah that's us for today, thanks very much for your time panellists, really appreciate your input and thanks to the audience, we've raised a good amount of money for our friends at Auckland City Mission, gosh, so they'll be rapped with that and you can be pleased that you've made the world a better place for attending today. Thanks very much again and I'll leave you with it, thanks a lot. Thanks, bye.